Radicepura 🍃

Spring is so close now that I can almost taste it …

Spring is a time of rejuvenation and new beginnings and what better way to celebrate this new season than by visiting a beautiful horticultural park, especially one that is nestled on the slopes of one of the worlds most active volcanoes with views of the sparkling Ionian Sea.

Put it on your to do list in Sicily !!!

We always love a new adventure and so last October on a gloriously sunny autumnal day, with our dog Daisy, we visited Radicepura, a botanical garden, horticultural park and event venue with around 3000 species of plants with 5000 varieties, water features and a seed bank all of which are divided into 5 hectares of land.

Radicepura is a project born from the desire of the Faro Family who wanted to share their passion for horticulture and plant species that they have collected over a span of 50 years by demonstrating their experience in international nursery gardening. It is an energy and water self-sufficient park made possible by innovative and environmentally friendly technology, great design and architecture. The roof of its greenhouse is covered in the latest generation solar panels that allow the park to self feed and collect rainwater needed to irrigate the plants.

The park boasts bushes, flowers, trees, rare palms, cacti and medicinal and aromatic herbs. Warm days, cool nights and fertile volcanic soils allows these exotic species to flourish.

The park also hosts the Radicepura Garden Festival which is a biennial event that takes place for 6 months of that year. The festival was created in 2017 as an event to rediscover the Mediterranean garden and to promote green culture through initiatives, events and culture, from music to artistic installations, botany and literature and food and wine tours. The aim is to show the world the limitless potential of a unique rich and productive land with particular climate conditions. The park calls out to invite students, landscape architects, garden designers, botanists, urban planners, engineers, artists and all those with the skills to design and create a garden to participate by sending in their garden design ideas.

The fourth edition of the Radicepura Garden Festival will take place from June to December 2023, each festival has a different theme.

As well as new installations for the garden festival there are also permanent installations with intriguing names such as "Alpheo and Aretusa", so named after the beloved Greek myth of Ortigia in Syracuse, "Anamorphose", "Tour d'Y Voir", suggesting an ivory tower (tour d'iviore) meaning a symbolic place where the romantic spirit of the artist can find refuge, “Come Back to Itaca", inspired by Ulysses and the legend of Homer's The Odyssey which is well known to the island, "The Signora's Garden" and "The Gardens of Essences". There are also laboratories and workshops for all ages, a sensory landscape area which pays homage to the Mediterranean and Sicilian landscape through touch, smell, sight and taste, an educational vegetable garden and a maze for children to enjoy.

The park is a place to see if you are a keen gardener. It is a very nice place for a peaceful walk around the many different types of designed gardens that are a sight to behold in the unique volcanic and sea-view setting and it offers a true feast for the senses.

Visits are arranged by appointment only due to the fact that the park is a busy and popular event venue so therefore it can be often closed to public for exclusive use and also work on the gardens are sometimes ‘work in progress’.

After arranging our visit beforehand, on our arrival at Radicepura we were greeted by the lovely Martina who gave us a map and invited us to explore and discover the park and gardens. We were very lucky that morning to have Radicepura all to ourselves apart from gardeners and landscapers hard at work.

Set within the gardens is a beautiful palazzo and a palmento, which is a traditional stone building with an ancient wine press, but more about that later.

From the terrace of the palazzo, which is used for weddings and events, we followed the entrance to the trails which led us to the landscaped gardens where we were greeted by an outstanding sculpture "The Dream of Empedocles" by artist Emilo Isgrò. This huge masterpiece sculpted by hand represents lemon seeds and is carved from lava. Empedocles was an Ancient Greek philosopher and a native citizen of the Sicilian Greek city of Akragas, now modern day Agrigento which is famous for The Valley of Temples.

Following the trails and our map we wound our way through the fascinating garden installations with the warm autumn air infused with two of my favourite scents of Sicily, rosemary and jasmine flowers. In parts we could have been fooled to think that we had been transported to the deserts of Arizona with the variety of cacti surrounding us, however I do not think that the these deserts have the privilege of a smoking volcano lingering in the background.

The coastline you can see in the distance is known as ‘The Coast of the Cyclops” due to the legend of Ulysses but it is also known as the Lemon Riviera due to the abundance of citrus lemon trees that grow on the fertile volcanic slopes of Mount Etna that reach as far as the Ionian Sea. In Homer's The Odyssey, after being blinded by Ulysses, Polyphemus the cyclop broke rocks from Mount Etna and threw them at Ulysses and his men in a fit of anger as they escaped on their ship back to Ithaca in Greece. Polythemus had been holding them hostage in his Mount Etna cave eating them one by one. Off the coast there are three rocks that stand prominently in the sea which are said to be the same rocks thrown by the cyclop.

My personal favourite installation was "Anamorphose" by François Abélanet. This installation has elevated garden beds radiating out from a pool of water, the symbol of eternal life, which seems to invoke an air of mystery set above mosaic floor tiles. Anamorphosis is a term used to describe a distorted projection requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, the term is used in painting, photography, sculptures and installations. This installation was also a perfect place to laze under and have a rest in some shade away from the Sicilian sun with Daisy after our voyage of discovery.

It is hard to describe the full beauty of the flora and fauna at Radicepura and so let me allow my photos to do the talking later on ...

After our meandering adventure we headed back towards the palazzo.

The palazzo was designed and built by the engineer Mariano Panebianco for the aristocratic Pennisi di Santa Margherita family as a dowry for their daughters marriage into the Carpinato family and was designed as a holiday home with plenty of rooms for the large family. Its size was intended to forcefully stand out in the surrounding landscape which at the time boasted open stretches of vines, replaced first with citrus trees and thereafter the plant nursery of Radicepura.

Attached adjacent to the palazzo is the old palmento which served for a wine business that covered a surface area of more than 100 hectares. Inside the building are the original wine collecting tanks where the wine was run off by gravity through channels into large barrels which were unfortunately destroyed during World War Two. Some movie fans might recognise the palmento. A number of scenes from "The Godfather Part II" filmed in 1974 by Francis Ford Coppola were shot here. The palmento was made to look like an olive oil mill by Coppola because the main character of the film, Don Corleone played by Robert De Niro in this particular scene was an olive oil trader. Daisy and I could not resist following in the footsteps of the actor inside, whilst around us the building was being transformed for a wedding ceremony …

Radicepura makes a enchanting venue for destination weddings and special events and is one of Sicily's most exclusive venues where the diverse spaces and surroundings create an epic day to remember.

I recommend spending at least one to two hours exploring Radicepura and remember to a take hat and a bottle of water and your green fingers.

Why not combine a visit with a wine tasting experience at one of Mount Etna’s nearby wineries.

Well behaved dogs are allowed on short leashes.

See you all this year at the garden festival.

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To arrange your Experience at Radicepura visit www.radicepura.com

For more Information on the Garden Festival visit www.radicepurafestival.com

Work is in progress now for the next Garden Festival which is June to December 2023

You can also follow Radicepura on The Socials @ Facebook and Instagram

A big thank you to Martina for assisting me with our amazing visit

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